It’s official
- Thread starter Catfanincolo
- Start date
Yep. Hell, I've only recently come to terms with Penn State as a Big Ten school - let alone Maryland and Rutgers.
What are you complaining about?--they're all BIG. We're small. We seem to have overcome this in football and other, especially women's, sports. Basketball is a different animal, especially at NU which has no history. I was in grad school at Penn in the 1970's as a grad student, and Penn was ranked #3 most of the 1973 season, I believe, and went to the final four during that time. I remember seeing John Wooden on campus one day. The reason, Penn hired Chuck Daly (Detroit Pistons), Rollie Massimino (Villanova), and Dick Harter (Oregon). that's where they got their start together. Coaching is everything in basketball, and if you can recruit in the Ivy League, you can recruit in the B1G. UCLA proved this, Duke proved this. Princeton is no slouch, and Carmody did well there. Duke is no slouch, obviously, and Collins did well there. I believe the problem has something to do with Northwestern inherently regarding basketball, and I sure don't know what it is. Perhaps being in the B1G, where other schools can get their players without any academic credentials what-so-ever? So, I believe we should not lay this on Collins, the issue is bigger than him.
NU hired Tex Winter. No slouch. Bill Foster, e-Duke. No slouch. Bill Carmody, who won titles at Princeton. No slouch. Chris Collins, who took NU to the first ever NCAA Tournament win. No slouch.
I've lost my train of thought.......
It might be bigger than him, but it's also true that both Carmody and Collins significantly improved the program from where it was when they took over, in ways that their predecessors did not. So it's not unreasonable to think there's someone out there who could help NU take another step, if Collins isn't that coach. But even if this year continues down a bad path, he's still going to get more time to try to be that guy, due to the contract situation, so we'll see how he does.
And he should get that chance to be that guy, as the chance of finding that savior (markedly better than Carmody and Collins), as supported by your argument, is extremely low. He’s not yet on an inevitable downward path (which I recognize would be too late for us to act on); there’s still long-term momentum (just not very currently). And what if our new coaching choice were another O’Neill? We’d be set back another 10 years. We need to be very careful and diligent and patient about a coaching change.
Our mistake was not hiring the General Robert Montgomery Knight
Had we done so, we would have built a national powerhouse like Duke, including multiple B1G titles, Final Fours, and a National Championship Banner.
You surely are joking. The abusive screamer who represents the worst within us? He won, but at what cost? That's all that matters, right, winning--tOSU--your nemesis?
Hey, his players graduated, and he didn't cheat. He respected the scholar athlete ideal.
Maybe he yelled a bit and threw a chair, but he won.
The kid he punched deserved it.